Worth upgrading to Corel X8?

[Michael Hunter]

Every time I close down X6 I get a message with quite a good offer on the X8 upgrade.

I'm actually quite happy with X3 for general use, but use X6 for importing AI files etc - which has given some problems on a couple of recent jobs.

Apart from (possibly) getting improved file importing, is there anything else that anyone has found useful in the new version?

(Looking through the comparison table, the main "improvements" seem to be aimed at artists and printers, rather than laserists).

[Gary Hair]

The import improvements are worth it all alone! I switched back and forth between X6 and X8 and every time I had trouble importing into X6 it worked fine in X8. I really like the screen layout better too, it's nice having tabs for each drawing instead of having to click on "Window" to see what's open.

[Paul hardy]

it depends on whether you need those new features. We upgraded from X5 to X8. During my use, X8 has been unstable. I've had X8 crash more in 2 months than X5 did in 5 years. simple things... yesterday I had one file open, I selected 2 more in the open file dialog.... program crashed.

They changed certain little things. Used to be you could select a text item, click on the font size in the toolbar and change it, hit tab and it would be changed. In X8, tab won't work, I have to hit enter or it won't make the change.

Graphics twitches too. The page add,page no, forward,back buttons at the bottom left all overlap until you move the cursor over them and they will spread out.

[Gary Hair]

They changed certain little things. Used to be you could select a text item, click on the font size in the toolbar and change it, hit tab and it would be changed. In X8, tab won't work, I have to hit enter or it won't make the change.

Not sure what you mean here. I opened a new drawing, selected the text tool, typed in some text in the default font and size. When I clicked in the font size dropdown it changed immediately when I clicked on a different size. No tab or enter key necessary.

Graphics twitches too. The page add,page no, forward,back buttons at the bottom left all overlap until you move the cursor over them and they will spread out.

This may be something with your computer, mine looks normal. Same thing with your crashing, mine has been running without any issues whatsoever for 5 or 6 months. Granted, I have a pretty high end machine that has loads of ram and an SSD and all I have installed on it are Corel X8, Trotec Job Control and the software for my UV printer. It's about as clean a machine as can be!

[Greg W Watson]

It was worth it to me so I did not have to ask customers who provide me .ai files to save them as older versions so I could import them

[Michael Hunter]

Thanks!

Looks like I'm going to have to pay out - just to get the latest AI file import.

I've got this sneaky feeling the Corel and Adobe are mutually benefiting from this : change the way basic things work every year and force everyone who imports files (whichever way) to upgrade.

[John Lifer]

The Epilog forum has numerous complaints about x8, I'm an x7 user and not upgrading, so just say'n!

[David Somers]

I might add that if you are a heavy macro user in previous versions of Corel, or if you want to make use of the Corel Plug in you are likely going to find that Corel X8 does not support macros done in earlier versions, and that the plugin wont work with it either. At least that was the case a number of weeks back and I did not see evidence that has changed as of today. That doesnt stop you from using X8 with RDWorks. It just means you cant make use of the plug in until either Corel changes to accomodate it, or Ruida changes to accomodate X8. Till then you simply import. The inability to use earlier macros could be a real deterrent to folks though. Something to be aware of.

[Kev Williams]

I've discussed the .ai importing problem here before, forget who it was that had the suggestion but it works--

Problem- ai won't import.
quickfix, save it as a PDF, and import that-
result- it won't import either-

fix that works-
if you don't have a free PDF converter, get one - once installed, it will show up and act exactly as any other printer...
pdfprinter.jpg
They will turn ANYTHING you can send to a printer into a PDF--

Next, open the AI file- if you get the 'select program' message, open with 'PDF Reader'

When it's open, hit print, and choose the PDF converter. After a few seconds, it will ask you to save the file-
choose a name and save it. Once it's done, it will produce the new PDF for you to examine.

Now go to corel, and import the PDF it just converted. Voila!

-it's worked every time for me, and I've found more uses for the PDF converter than I'll ever find for any X8 upgrades!

[Michael Hunter]

I downloaded a PDF converter to try. I thought it was a free one, but it turned out to be a 14 day trial for fairly expensive software.

Gave it a whirl, and it messed up the most recent problem AI file in exactly the same way that Corel X6 did.

Maybe AI has changed recently???

[Kev Williams]

If an AI DOES open in Corel but is messed up, a PDF converter probably won't change that I'm afraid - not sure X8 will either--

The problem I have that it DOES fix is when Corel gives me the 'can't open it because it's compressed' BS errors. Almost ALL AI files I get sent lately give me that error, which I assume is simply due to the newest versions of Illustrator.

Maybe Illustrator is adding more 'ha ha, you still can't open this' issues on purpose- Just yesterday I opened an AI with Reader, all was well, but when I converted it, all the text was a mishmash of random symbols and letters. I've had tax forms from Turbotax do this, just love printing up 32 pages of taxes and all of them look like:
!TX4=5dGedDg#67#5=dl(I{$EL*K! mjg_D*I()+l$YJA _P_NGR{R"{ AJFJOLW:Afenj'argffDFIa#$p (I could keep going but )

[Mike Null]

I know an oldtimer, who's a very busy engraver, and he's still using version 9. I have X7 but use X5 because I like it. I don't seem to have file issues, though that was my justification for buying X7.

I will defer buying X8 for some time.

[Kev Williams]

by the way, here's the converter I've used, for many years now, I have it on every computer- and it is totally free...

http://download.cnet.com/CC-PDF-Converter/3000-10743_4-10736688.html


fwiw, I bought X4 a couple of years ago, I have no need for more...

[Gary Hair]

If an AI DOES open in Corel but is messed up, a PDF converter probably won't change that I'm afraid - not sure X8 will either--

I can verify that it will fix that problem. I have yet to have an ai file that doesn't open properly in X8 that wouldn't open in X5 or X6.